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More than two weeks had passed since the last message from the north. Lauren’s parents had returned with their troops already. The Earl of Hyrne had sent word that he was still pursuing Duke Lukas. Everyone said the cavalry had managed to stop Sir Halvor Ingridsson’s forces. It had been a great victory, but since then, there had been dozens of little battles all over central Keneshire, and there had been apparently no way for Andras to get a message through to Keneburg.
Lauren was nervous for her brother. And like everyone at Dunharvin Castle, she was worried for the fate of young King Edwin, who had gone along for the ride. But more than anything, Lauren was concerned for the fate of her husband. This feeling came as a surprise to her, and she was ashamed of herself for being surprised. A woman ought to be worried for her husband, oughtn’t she? But in the short time they’d had together before he rode off to war, Lauren had never felt any great passion for Wallace, or from him, either. A slowly growing fondness, perhaps, but not a grand fervor to inspire poets. It was odd, therefore, to find him so constantly in her thoughts now. But he was. Whenever people talked about the war, or speculated on the success of the campaign, she found herself thinking, “Yes, but what about Wallace?”
On the first day of December, an odd visitor appeared in the Court of Honor: a mendicant brother in rough brown homespun, riding a donkey. The chamberlain suggested giving the man a meal in the buttery and sending him on his way, but it turned out that the traveling monk had a message for Lauren.
His name was Brother Irving, and he said he was associated with the priory at Basington.
“Oh, Basington!” said Lauren. “That’s affiliated with the Erstenwell Abbey. My sister is a nun there.”
“Indeed, my lady,” Irving said. “And in fact your sister is the one who asked me to come see you.”
“Morwen asked you? Oh, dear.” Lauren loved her sister, but since the wedding, Morwen’s letters had invariably contained pithy quotations from the Epistles of Ovida about a wife’s duties to her husband. Lauren wasn’t sure she could stand that. “What did she want?”
“There was a battle fought near Basington, and your husband, Lord Urcard, was gravely injured. He is in the care of the sisters now, along with dozens of other men. Sister Morwen wishes for you—”
“Oh, Earstien! What happened to him?” Lauren tugged at the tasseled ends of her sleeves, almost pulling them apart.
“He received a pike wound in the chest, and then broke his left arm when he fell from his horse.”
She decided on the spot that she would go to him. The helpful Brother Irving offered to lend her his donkey, but she said, “No, if you don’t mind, could you guide me in one of my parents’ carriages? I think we’ll get there a bit faster.”
When she went to tell her parents that she was leaving, though, it turned out that the same lull in the fighting that had allowed Brother Irving to make the trip had also let through a company under the command of King Edwin himself, bearing an official letter from Andras. Edwin was still catching his breath and dripping mud on her mother’s dressing room floor when Lauren walked in.
Like Morwen, Andras wanted Lauren to know that her husband had been injured in battle. But Andras made it sound as if there was nothing much to worry about. “I’ve decided to winter my troops here at Basington,” he wrote, “so Urcard and the other fellows will have plenty of time to recover. They will be sitting around with nothing to do. I really quite envy them.”
“There you are,” said Lauren’s mother. “If Wallace were in truly serious condition, Andras would say so.”
“Morwen says Wallace was wounded in the chest. That sounds serious to me.”
Flora gave Lauren a withering look. “Morwen has never seen a battle. I don’t doubt her first view of the aftermath is shocking to her. Trust me when I say that if Wallace was still alive when Andras sent his message, then his chances of pulling through are excellent. If a man is going to die from a wound, he usually does it in the first day or two.”
“He really is getting good care,” Edwin assured her. “He’s in fine spirits.”
Lauren wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. “In fine spirits” seemed like the sort of thing people said about an aging invalid just before he passed away. So she made an appeal to her father. He told her the same thing as her mother. And he added that it was “dangerous for a young lady to ride alone, considering there were battles in the area recently.”
“I’ll have Brother Irving with me,” she said.
Her father looked unimpressed. “At least wait until I can send a regiment of cavalry with you.”
That might be a month, or it might be next spring. Winter was approaching fast, and Lauren could imagine the excuses her parents would come up with: “It’s too cold,” “the snow is too deep,” “the horses will get sick,” “wait for the thaw.” By then, Wallace might be dead, or he might have suffered months of agony. And she would be stuck here, doing her sewing and reading romance stories.
Well, if romances had taught her anything, it was that a lady didn’t sit around when her lover was in distress. She went to him, and she didn’t wait for her parents’ permission.
The next morning, while her parents were at a council meeting, Lauren went out to the stables and borrowed a horse. She would very much have liked to take a carriage, but that would be noticed sooner, and it would be easier for her parents to find her and drag her back. So, she set out on the northern road with a pack of clothes, some medical herbs filched from the housekeeper’s stores, and a thick, warm bedroll. Brother Irving trotted along at her side on his donkey, looking relieved at having avoided the sensual temptations of a carriage ride.
Irving made a pleasant enough companion, though he rarely spoke and spent a great deal of time in silent prayer. But that suited Lauren fine. She was thinking about Wallace and worrying about his wounds, and wondering whether the nuns at Morwen’s convent had proper medical training.
They passed the sites of several battles. There were fresh graves along some of the roads, but the dead horses still lay where they had fallen, frozen stiff now and grotesquely twisted. Lauren saw them and shuddered.
“It could be worse,” observed Brother Irving cheerfully. “This could be July.”
Lauren insisted they ride through the night, changing horses (or donkeys, as the case might be) along the way. For Lauren, travel had always meant going from one grand house to another, with brief visits to the finer inns. Now she discovered another, parallel network of hostels and stables, dedicated to religious use, that she had never known existed. When she had to sleep, she slept in church crypts and on the floors of preosts’ houses. But she slept very little, and after a few days, she fell into a numb haze of exhaustion and worry.
At last, on a snowy morning, she and Irving turned down a wide, gentle valley, and after rounding a bend in the road, she could see the gray silhouette of the abbey ahead on her right. She had been there once before, in her father’s company, more than a year ago now. She recalled that there were rules about who could go where, and when nuns could speak with outsiders, but she didn’t remember what the rules were, exactly.
As it happened, she needn’t have worried, because almost the first person she saw when she entered the gate was her brother Andras.
“Holy Finster! I didn’t think you’d actually come up here!” he said. He picked her up and hugged her, then spun her in a circle.
“Lauren is doing her duty, like a proper wife should.”
That was Morwen’s voice, and when Andras set Lauren down, she saw her sister standing in a nearby doorway, smiling. They hugged, too, and then all three siblings shared a hug, just to be sure.
Morwen kissed Lauren’s cheek and said, “I’m so glad you’ve come. Lord Urcard will be so pleased to see you.”
“I...hope so,” said Lauren, suddenly nervous. She had sent no message saying she was coming. And Wallace had never been particularly affectionate. What if he was annoyed to find her here?
Morwen took her upstairs to the little hospital ward that the nuns had established in their visitors’ dormitory. Morwen stopped to get a length of linen, saying, “It’s about time to change his bandage.”
Lauren had read enough romances to know what was expected of her. She took the linen and said, “I’ll do that from now on.” Then, being practical, she added, “Though I wouldn’t mind it if you showed me what to do.”
Wallace looked stunned when he saw her approaching with Morwen. Not angry, not annoyed, not even happy or sad. Just astonished, like she was some trick of magy. “He’s surprised I came,” she thought.
With Morwen’s help, they changed his bandage, and then Morwen went away, and Lauren was left with her husband. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m here,” she said.
“I...I don’t mind at all,” he said, reaching over and taking her hand. “It’s been rather lonely. Except when your sister or one of the other nuns comes around reading from the Halig Leoth. It’s very...edifying, but it’s a bit dull.”
She smiled. “I could read you some of my latest story.”
“I’ve never read any of your stories.” Wallace fussed with the edge of his bandage.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be interested. I didn’t want to presume.”
He squeezed her hand. “Neither did I. But I’d love to hear some of them.”
She read what she had—the start of a courtly romance in which a beautiful princess was going to be married to the wicked king of a neighboring land, who also happened to be a bloodthirsty ogre. “It’s rather sensational,” she said. “But it’ll have a happy ending.”
“I hope so,” he said. “I never like tragedies.”
There was one scare, early on in Lauren’s stay, when Sister Moirin, the chief infirmerer, thought there might be a serious infection around his heart. Lauren went to the abbey and prayed for him, and then slept in a chair by his bed. Early one morning, she woke to find him grasping her hand. His face was gray, and his eyes were pained.
“If I die,” he said, “promise me you won’t let your mother marry you off again for some political advantage.”
“You’re not going to die,” she assured him.
He didn’t, and they fell into a routine after that. She changed his bandages and talked to the infirmerers about the progress of his wounds. Then she went to the little third floor room that Morwen had arranged for her and spent most of her morning writing. She brought Wallace his lunch and his supper, and then in the evening, their treat was to hear whatever she had managed to write during the day. It gave her an incentive not to put her writing off until another time, which was something she unfortunately did a great deal. Her best friend, Donella, had written somewhere around sixty or seventy stories. Lauren had started writing a similar number, but had only finished five.
Wallace was an appreciative audience, and he gave thoughtful critiques when she asked for his opinion. He helped her come up with stories, as well, and his ideas were often new and different. She and Donella tended to recycle a lot of the same plots over and over, but Wallace hadn’t read the same books they had, so his ideas seemed much fresher.
They celebrated Seefest and the Solstice with their own private little parties, with Lauren curled up beside him in his bed. They couldn’t do anything but lie there together—the infirmerer had been very strict about the possibility of “strenuous activity” reopening his wound. But they kissed, and they gave each other little presents. He got her a new pen knife and ink (Andras had gone into Basington and bought them for him). She got him new slippers.
They also had a bottle of wine, which the infirmerer had also forbidden. But they were both of the opinion that they couldn’t possibly forego every single holiday pleasure. So they had a glass apiece and toasted the new year to come.